Editorial, January 2009 The present global economic crisis, whatever its final place in the historical ranking of most dramatic economic crises that many seem fixated on trying to predict, has already brought about unprecedented coordinated international economic intervention and has put yet more serious question-marks over both the “Washington-Consensus” as a model for development, and more generally the principles underlying the current functioning of the global economy. What is much more important, however, and what is presently undecided, is whether it will provide the opportunity for political innovation beyond mere technical fixes to the status quo. The immediate causes of what was first the financial crisis, and then became a more general economic crisis – irresponsible mortgage lending, unregulated speculation and borrowing, opaque financial products etc. – are increasingly well identified and analysed, and the technical debates about regulatory reform as well as discussions of the best ways to restart the system are well under way. What is startlingly and alarmingly lacking from the enormous amount of discussion surrounding the crisis however, are any serious political assessments of the way of life both presupposed and promoted by the economic system we are in. What is more, many of those who have been long-term critics of elements or the entirety of the “Western way of life” have expressed their feeling of unpreparedness, of the acceleration of history, of urgency. It is worth asking where this feeling of unpreparedness might come from before suggesting some reasons for thinking that the current economic crisis opens the possibility for alternatives to be articulated. There have been two apparently fertile subjects for promoting public discussion of alternative ways of life in recent years: the environment and third-world poverty. The environment as a political cause, although having the potential to radically question the relationship and priority between humans and the earth, has a tendency to focus on the second of these terms, and derive proposed changes to our way of life from the demands of the planet or environment. Third world poverty in its very formulation also has a tendency to be thought of as an external problem: one that calls for charity, or aid, rather than directly for a change in behaviour. What both of these political causes lack is a direct consideration of the status of man himself: of what is important and what is not. This seems to be the question that is harder and harder to pose in a direct fashion. A further phenomenon is perhaps the underlying cause of this problem: the increasing crisis of the state as an effective institution of governance. The international or transnational character of the most pressing political issues of our time is well known under the rubric of ‘globalisation’, and the inadequacy of the state as a political construction for dealing with these problems is increasingly evident: be it the financial crisis, the environment or terrorist threat. The dominance of multinational corporations over the nation-state is also well-known. What is perhaps less highlighted is that with the losing of relevance of the state and the lack of immediate successors, the context in which we pose the political question of “our” way of life is increasingly lost or complicated. This has perhaps most dramatically been the case for the Marxist left which no longer has the State to kick against, but all critics of our contemporary way of life are equally posed with the difficult problem of the level at which to situate the critique. The deliberate frustration of the possibility of critique is perhaps the numbing core of what is often named ‘neoliberalism’, and effectiveness of its dissolution of all alternative platforms the cause of the present feeling of vertiginous urgency. The global recession that we are entering at once makes the stakes higher and might create conditions in which the question of what is really important can once again be posed profoundly. The International Labour Organisation recently predicted that an additional 20 million people are likely to be unemployed by the end of 2009, and the number of people living in extreme poverty will increase by up to 40 million. The hardest hit will certainly be economically underdeveloped countries, but one obvious consequence of the global recession is that the social question will again be high up the agenda in large parts of Europe and Northern America, where poverty will be much more visible on our streets, amongst people like us. That will either provoke a reflex turning-inwards and a new protectionism, or a turning-outwards and a profound re-appreciation of the social implications on a global scale of the way of life we presently buy into and aspire towards. There is nothing that makes the first of these outcomes inevitable and unavoidable, but it is the most likely result if we leave the currently dominant ideology unchallenged. The second outcome will only be realised by the urgent transnational engagement of activists, thinkers, artists and citizens to make it possible. Although the task of dealing with the social implications of a global recession looks likely to remain largely the competence of the nation-state, the reflection on the implications of our way of life must necessarily take place at a transnational level if it is to have genuinely political consequence. The financial crisis has given a new impetus to the consideration of reform of the World Bank and IMF, the G4 has grown to a G20. Each of these provides a newly active political level in which the status quo will either be tacitly reaffirmed or can be challenged. Amongst relevant international institutions, the European Union, despite all appearances, has a particular importance for challenging the status quo. That it is the largest trading bloc in the world and also the largest donor of humanitarian aid gives the EU a global significance which it has yet to learn to fully assert, but what is crucially important is that the EU is unique amongst international bodies in having a certain claim of democratic representation of its peoples. It thus potentially provides a unique political horizon in which the status quo can effectively be called into question by the people themselves. It is with these considerations in mind, amongst others, that European Alternatives launches its ChangeUtopia! series of events throughout Europe, starting with the question of poverty in a global world. We must make sure the economic crisis does not presage an imaginative crisis which would be more catastrophic because more terminal, for it would nullify our capacity to find alternative ways of carrying on.